Trump Fundraiser Offered to Help Lift Sanctions on Russian Firms

[spanone]

Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump, offered last year to help a Moscow-based lawyer get Russian companies removed from a U.S. sanctions list.

Broidy made the offer after an inquiry from Andrei Baev, an energy lawyer at Chadbourne & Parke LLP, both men acknowledged in statements to Bloomberg News this week. In a proposal sent to Baev shortly before Trump’s January 2017 inauguration, Broidy sketched out a potential campaign to influence top U.S. officials, according to a person with knowledge of the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity.Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump, offered last year to help a Moscow-based lawyer get Russian companies removed from a U.S. sanctions list.

The plan never went forward, Broidy and Baev said, and no such lobbying took place. But the discussions are a striking illustration of how Russians’ efforts to escape sanctions led them to seek political allies close to Trump. Broidy, a Los Angeles money manager and deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a written statement to Bloomberg that he didn’t offer to “personally” set up meetings with top U.S. officials for Baev’s clients. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“From the beginning I made it clear that while I would consider trying to help the firm build a team and to put them in touch with some experts, I am not a lobbyist and didn’t plan on becoming one,” Broidy said in a statement. “I also made clear from the beginning that any arrangement we reached would need to be in full compliance with U.S. law. We never made any agreement, and the project never went anywhere. I never contacted any U.S. officials on behalf of Chadbourne or its clients and never had any contact with Chadbourne’s clients.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-23/trump-fundraiser-offered-to-help-lift-sanctions-on-russian-firms

[dalton99a]

1. Broidy paid $18 million in 2009 to avoid jail time:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/us/politics/elliott-broidy-trump-access-circinus-lobbying.html

Fund-Raiser Held Out Access to Trump as a Prize for Prospective Clients
By KENNETH P. VOGEL and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK | MARCH 25, 2018

WASHINGTON — For Elliott Broidy, Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign represented an unparalleled political and business opportunity.

An investor and defense contractor, Mr. Broidy became a top fund-raiser for Mr. Trump’s campaign when most elite Republican donors were keeping their distance, and Mr. Trump in turn overlooked the lingering whiff of scandal from Mr. Broidy’s 2009 guilty plea in a pension fund bribery case.

After Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Broidy quickly capitalized, marketing his Trump connections to politicians and governments around the world, including some with unsavory records, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Broidy suggested to clients and prospective customers of his Virginia-based defense contracting company, Circinus, that he could broker meetings with Mr. Trump, his administration and congressional allies.

Mr. Broidy’s ability to leverage his political connections to boost his business illuminates how Mr. Trump’s unorthodox approach to governing has spawned a new breed of access peddling in the swamp he vowed to drain.

[BigmanPigman]

2. I especially love the last sentence...

"Mr. Broidy’s ability to leverage his political connections to boost his business illuminates how Mr. Trump’s unorthodox approach to governing has spawned a new breed of access peddling in the swamp he vowed to drain."

"Unorthodox approach" is sugar coating it...how about "blatantly corrupt and deceitful" instead.

[spanone]

3. 'criminal enterprise' might be a better phrase

[BigmanPigman]

4. Speaking of criminal enterprises I was just researching the Mercers

and tried to find info on "Bekah's" husband (or soon to be ex husband?) and saw a Wikipedia page I have never seen before. It was strange. What the Hell is this?
No description defined
Sylvain M MirochnikoffSylvan MirochnikoffSylvain Michel Mirochnikoff
edit
Statements
instance of
human
0 references
sex or gender
male
0 references
country of citizenship
France
0 references
given name
Sylvain
0 references
date of birth
15 March 1973
1 reference
reference URL https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KKW2-666
spouse
Rebekah Mercer
start time 2003
1 reference
reference URL http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704446704575207193495569502
employer
Morgan Stanley
position held managing director
1 reference
reference URL http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704446704575207193495569502
educated at
Stanford University
1 reference
reference URL http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704446704575207193495569502
residence
Heritage at Trump Place
1 reference
reference URL http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704446704575207193495569502

[spanone]

5. weird...they bought 6 apartments?....can't read the rest/paywall

was it trump tower?

[BigmanPigman]

6. I found this...

"She and her family live in a sprawling triplex in a Trump-branded residential building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.” She is married to Sylvain Mirochnikoff. In March 2017, The New Yorker reported that Mercer and her husband were divorcing, writing, “In 2003, she married a Frenchman, Sylvain Mirochnikoff, who is a managing director of Morgan Stanley. They had four children and bought a twenty-eight-million-dollar property—six apartments joined together—at Trump Place, on the Upper West Side. Now forty-three, she is divorcing Mirochnikoff.”

...and this:
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/showthread.php?85702-Sylvain-Mirochnikoff

All roads lead to Russia with the GOP!